the crisis of the nineteenth century in cambodia

The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

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The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century in Cambodia

I. The Imposition of Vietnamese Control :

According to the restoration of Eng in 1794 is treated in the

Cambodian chronicles as an event of miraculous significance when

he left Bangkok, they assert," the sky did not grow dark, nor

did rain fall; however,thunder boomed in the noon sky, marking a

noise like a mighty storm. the restoration was indeed dramatic,

for in the preceding fifteen years Cambodia had not been

governed at all, a former official name Baen had been installed

in Udong by the Thai, had been given the title of Ta-La-Ha, or

first minister, and had busied himself with recruiting troops to

fight the Tay-Son inside Cambodia and in Vietnam, in 1794, after

so many years of service, Rama I seems to have felt obliged to

reward him in some way.The reward he chose to bestow, however,

was hardly his to give ,as it consisted of the large and

prosperous Srok of Battambong and Mahanokor (or Great City"

containing the ruins of Angkor") Baen had held power in this

region for part of the 1780s and probably retained a personal

following there, but in awarding the two Srok to him, Rama, I

removed them from Eng's jurisdiction without absorbing them into

Siam, in the 1790s and for most of the nineteenth century, Thai

suzerainty seems to have meant only that Baen and his successors

were not obligated to provide labours for Eng and had to

transmit gifts- generally wild cardamom- to Bangkok from time to

time.Detail about the transfer are impossible to uncover, and

perhaps documents were never drawn up, in the 1860s, in fact, a

French official in Cambodia seeking information about the Thai

claims, recorded to his superiors that (Siam) is unable to

present any documentation about the cession, the present King of

Cambodia ( Eng's grandson Norodom) his officials old men who

have been consulted, and Eng's widow, who is still alive, are

all of the opinion that none exists.


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In the twentieth century , however, the the loss, of the two

Srok poisoned Thai-Cambodian relations Siam gave them up under

pressure from France in 1907 but resumed control over most of

their territory from 1941 to 1946, in the context of 1790s,

however, it is unlikely that Rama I was pursuing a long-rang

plan, and his Grandson, Rama IV, put the matter succinctly when

he wrote that, the Thai Kingdom was able to enlarge itself(at

this time) because it had the greater power. After building him-

selves a Palace in Udong and visiting Bangkok with a tributary

mission in 1796 Eng died at the beginning of 1797, his Reign had

been uneventful, and his contributions to Cambodian history were

almost inadvertent, by returning to Udong, which had been

without a King for so long, he brought Cambodia back to life, by

fathering four sons, he founded a dynasty that was to Reign in

Udong and Phnompenh until 1970, these two contributions rather

than specific actions on his part, probably account for the

reverence with which he is treated in Cambodian chronicles

compiled for his descendants. The next ten years, until his son

Chan's coronation in 1806, are poorly documented, but for

reasons that remain unclear, the young prince became alienated

from the Thai court at some point and seems to have begun to

formulate a pro- Vietnamese foreign policy, what ever its causes

Thai sources hint at a feud between the young prince and Rama ,

I- Chan anti- Thai orientation is a present theme of his long

Reign.


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As soon as he had been Crowned, for example, he hastened to

strengthen Cambodia's tributary connections with Vietnam while

maintaining his subservience to Bangkok, becoming, in the words

of the Vietnamese emperor, an independent country that is the

slave of two. the process was even more complicated for Chan's

increasing animosity toward the Thai alienated some of his own

Chaovay-Srok especially in the northwest,and his personal

insecurity is indicated by his request to the Vietnam

emperor at about his time that he be allowed to recruit

Vietnamese residents of Cambodia to from his personal bodyguard,

the pace of his alienation from Bangkok accelerated after Rama.

I' death in 1809, Chan refused to attend the ceremony showed

signs of being pro-Thai, Chan had them executed without trail.

in 1811 to 1812 conflict broke out inside Cambodia between Thai

and Vietnamese, expeditionary forces, the Thai supported one of

Chan's dissident brothers. the Vietnamese responded to Chan's

request for help all three of Chan's brothers fled to Bangkok at

this time, leaving him free for the rest of his Reign to pursue

a pro Vietnamese policy, even though the campaigns of 1811-

1812, were indecisive, their net effect was to reduce Chan's

freedom of action, as his growing dependence on the Vietnamese

was greater than his former allegiance, so reluctantly given, to

Bangkok. twice a month, wearing Vietnamese bureaucratic costumes

supplied by Hue', the King and his entourage had to visit a

moved in 1812- and bow before a tablet bearing the Vietnamese

emperor's name over the next twenty years, Chan fought with

decreasing success to achieve a modicum of independence.

Three events stand out from these early years of relatively

loose Vietnamese control, these are the unsuccessful Cambodian

attack on the Northwestern Srok in 1816, the excavation of the

Vinh Tre Canal in Southern Vietnam,using Cambodian labor, around

1820, and the anti-Vietnamese uprising that broke out soon

afterward in Southeastern Cambodia and in Khmer-populated

portions of Vietnam.


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The military expedition of 1816 was the last attempt before

the 1960s, by normally constitution Cambodian army to take the

offensive against foreign troops, and it was a failure, perhaps

to placate the Thai, or merely because the campaign had failed,

Vietnamese authorities in Phnompenh asked Chan to discipline the

Oknha who had led the expedition,taken to Saigon afterward, the

official was reprimanded and fined, the sequence of events,

although not significant in itself, epitomized Chan's

helplessness in face of Vietnamese pressure.

II. Cambodia’s Relations with Vietnam and Siam :

Based on the research, we can relieved that there were 2 main

characters of the post-Angkorean Cambodia were the shift in the

country's center of gravity from Angkor to Phnompenh, with the

commercial and demographic ramification that the move implied,

and the roles played by the Thai and Vietnam, nineteenth century

Cambodia, therefore, must be seen in part against the back

ground if its foreign relations. These relations were carried

out with two countries, Vietnam and Siam ,and occurred within a

framework of rivalry between the two larger Kingdom, rivalry

sprang from the unwillingness of either court, to accept the

other as equal or superior, this unwillingness, in turn ,can be

traced in part to the traditional language of tributary

diplomacy, which stressed the inequality between the sender and

recipient of tribute. A major objective of Southeast Asian

diplomacy in the nineteenth century, in deed, was the ritualized

expression of differential status through the ceremonial

exchange of gifts, the rules for these tributary exchanges grew

out of the particular system in which they occurred, the Thai

and the Vietnamese, for example, had separate ones, which

overlapped inside Cambodia.


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Both system owed a good deal to their counterpart in China,

which had been in effect since the third century Bc and was

still operation in the 1800s, from a Cambodian point of view ,

the Thai variant was looser and more idiosyncratic, for the Thai

made allowance for local customs and local products, the

Vietnamese did not, the latter were rigid in copying the Chinese

model, in 1806, for example, Vietnamese emperor Gia-long, in

choosing gifts to send to the Cambodian King, transmitted

facsimiles of ones he had received, at the beginning of his own

Reign, from the Chinese emperor. some of these, like "Golden

Dragon paper for imperial decrees" and Chinese bureaucratic

costumes were meaningless to the Khmer, the seals of investiture

sent from Hue' to Udong were irrelevant to Cambodians because

they had camels carved on them. like the seals that the Chinese

court sent to tributary states in central Asia and,incidentally,

to Vietnam, one puzzled Cambodian chronicler referred to animal

as a "Chinese-Lion".

From Vietnam's point of view , Vietnam was ":Above" Cambodian

, just as China was "above" Vietnam, at the same time, of course

, Cambodia was below, Vietnam and Vietnam was below China, in

other words, Vietnam was the master in one relationship and the

servant in the other, as a by product of this duality, the

Civilized" goods sent from Hue' to Udong were facsimiles of

those sent from Beijing to Hue' while" Barbarian, goods

transmitted from Udong were the same sorts of products that

Vietnam transmitted to China. After 1810. King Chan and his

advisers were swept up into a game of power politics that they

had a little chance to change and no opportunity to win, they

had no choice, in Vietnamese terms ,Cambodia was a Fence, a

buffer state and a dumping-ground for colonist, to the Thai, the

Cambodians were fellow- Buddhist" Children" basking in a fund of

Chakrey-merit. who could provide cardamom for the court and

manpower for Chakrey wars, the Thai wanted the Cambodians to be

loyal,the Vietnamese wanted Cambodia's land and, incidentally,

its recognition of their superiority the Thai demanded service

and friendship,but they were usually unable-given the way they


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organizedtheir armies and the distance between Bangkok and

Phnompenh,to provide protection.

The Vietnamese , on the other hand, provided protection of a

sort ,but their actions led to the disappearance of Cambodia as

an independent state, by different routes, then, the Thai and

the Vietnamese often came to do the same things, taking over

certain Srok making hostages of the ruler and his relations, and

curtailing the independence of the Oknha.

To Chan and his advisers, the outcome of this game was

probably not obvious at first, in the early part of his

Reign,his alliance with Vietnam was probably meant only to

deflect some of the pressures on him from the Thai, letters took

so long between Bangkok, Udong, and Hue' that Chan was able to

buy time on several occasions by saying one thing to the Thai

and another to the Vietnamese, moreover, for most of his Reign,

he kept his communications open with both capitals by means of

the embassies he sent them, in fact Chan may well have been

under the impression that the equilibrium that prevailed in the

early years of his Reign was his own creation and that he had

more bargaining power with his patrons than he really did, even

if the balance of forces and the inactivity of the Thai and the

Vietnamese reflected Thai ans Vietnamese choice dictated by

their own perceptions of national interest and even if

Cambodia's independence reflected what were for the moment

limited Thai and Vietnamese ambitions rather than Cambodian

skill, there were still advantages to Chan in blurring the lines

of his allegiance, one of the chronicle, allegedly quoting

Emperor Gia-Long, makes this point quite clear.


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III. The Vietnamization of Cambodia :

When Chan returned to his battered, abandoned capital in early

1834,he found himself under more stringent Vietnamese control,

Thai successes in their overland offensive had shown Minh Mang

that he could not rely on the Khmer to provide a "Fence" for his

southern and Western borders, and with the defeat of the

rebellion, he now moved to intensify and consolidate his

control, to head this civilizing mission,he named the general

who had crushed the rebellion in Saigon,Truong Minh Giang

Giang needed Chan and his officials to provide the Vietnamese

with labor ,rice,and soldiers, Chan to have needed the

Vietnamese somewhat less in material terms, but probably counted

on them to protect him from assassination and revolt, like later

outsiders operating in Cambodia, Giang probably expected too

much from the King Oknha before 1834 was over, he had reported

pessimistically to Hue' that.

Giang's impatience was understandable, for Cambodian politics

at the time was characterized by a diffusion of power, a

shortage of resources and a negotiability of position that

effectively kept anyone from becoming powerful for very long,

That Cambodians should hesitate to accomplish tasks for the

Vietnamese struck Giang as insulting, even treacherous, but

Minh-Mang urged him to do the best he could with the human

materials at hand. Bodin, in the meantime, had settle his force

in the Northwest,as the 1830s,wore on,the Thai increased

their military presence in Battambong and Siam reap. placing Im

and Duang in ambiguous administrative control, presumably to

attract indigenous support against the Vietnamese, these program

was matched to the south and East by an intensive program of

Vietnamization, which affected many aspects of Cambodian life,

the program was set in motion in 1834 and played itself out

under the threat of Thai invasions for the rest of the 1830s the

last years of Ming Mang's Reign.


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An early victim of Vietnamization was Chan himself, toward the

end of 1834 according to the Vietnamese annals, he came under

the influence of ' magicians" who allegedly encouraged him to

accept bribes and "let criminals out of jail.

In a sense the magicians, were merely asking Chan to act like a

traditional King, but their influence distressed Truong Minh

Mang, who had them arrested and shot, for Chan himself, the end

of his struggle to stay alive and provide for himself and his

people a modicum of independence had arrived, in early 1835,

after a month's illness, he died abroad his royal barge, moored

opposite his ruined Palace in Phnompenh, he was forty-four years

old, and he had Reigned, in one way or another, for nearly forty

years. Chan's death posed problems for the Vietnamese,for he had

no sons and his eldest daughter, Princess Baen ,was suspected of

being pro- Thai,soon after his death,the Oknha agreed to

Vietnamese suggestion that Chan's second daughter, Princess

Mei,be named as queen,to officiate at her investiture Ming Mang

sent a Vietnamese official from Saigon, and in a hall built

specially for the purpose, Mei and her sisters faced North,

toward the emperor's letter authorizing her to Reign, while the

Vietnamese delegate and other officials faced South, as the

emperor always did in his Palace in Hue'.

Chan's brother Duang had been living in Battombang for several

years, under Thai protection, and an obscure sequence of events

in 1837 culminated in his arrest by the Thai and his return in

chains to Bangkok. The sources suggest that Vietnamese

emissaries from Phnompenh had tried to lure him down to the

capital with promises that he could be given the throne, Duang's

replies to them were so ambiguous as to convince both the Thai

and the Vietnamese that he intended to betray them, using Oknha

in the Capital region to gather supporters in an effort to

regain Chan's somewhat dubious independence.


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The Vietnamese also had problems moving troops and supplies

against the river currents prevalent at the time of year, and

the report adds that " not even one" rebel had surrendered,

despite the 'tolerant' policies of the Vietnamese court and even

though the record is full of references to the Khmer fleeing

like 'Rat and mice" or attacking like swarms of mosquitoes" at

the start of rebellion, Minh Mang ( who was to die following an

accident at the beginning of 1841) thought that an adequate

application of force, combined with rewards to loyal troops and

local officials, would be enough to put down the rebellion,

which angered him, he wrote, so much that his "hair stood on

end",he ordered ta-la-ha-lung and others to write letters asking

their relatives and clients in Cambodia to surrender, thus mis-

reading Cambodian loyally to un-available and devalued patrons,

and he also approved sending' monks and magicians, into

Phnompenh to undermine morale, in the last months of his Reign,

he demanded weekly reports from the front and suggested that

Cambodian crops and orchards be burned down as a preemptive

measure,'The Cambodians are so stupid he declared" that we must

frighten them, ordinary moral suasion has no effect. It is

impossible to say what Minh Mang would have done had he survived

the next seven years, but it is clear that the rebellion had

begun to lose momentum before his death and that his successor,

Thieu Tri, was less committed than he had been to a victory in

Cambodia, the new emperor began his Reign looking for a solution

that would be acceptable to his court and to be Cambodians,of

not necessarily to the Thai, at one stage, he brushed aside

a suggestion that he negotiate directly with the Thai as being,

Wrong and foolish" distance, distrust, and the momentum of the

war, however as well as the ambiguity of Thieu Tri' objectives

in Cambodia, kept the conflict going until 1847.


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Despite Vietnamese reports to the contrary Cambodian troops

were often poorly supplied, at the end 1840, a rebel Oknha

complained to the Thai that" we are unable to continue fighting

the Vietnamese, we lack the troops to do so, the rifles, the

ammunition, and the supplies for weapons we have only knives,

cross-bows,and clubs we cannot continue to fight"


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IV. The Restoration of Cambodia :

Due to the court of Vietnamese in Cambodia sought a solution

to what they saw as an internal Vietnamese problem, Chaophraya

Bodin's expeditionary force, numbering thirty-five thousand men,

assembled near Battambang and then attacked and defeated the

Vietnamese garrison at Pursat, Bodin was prepared to attack the

capital but hesitate because he was short of supplies and lacked

confidence in his troops instead he withdrew to Battambang,

where he sought to consolidate his political position, during

the siege of Pursat,eighteen rebellious Oknha had written him

pleading for Thai support and for Duang's return from Bangkok,

the Oknha pledge allegiance to Rama III, complained about

shortages of supplies, and asserted That Cambodians would be

happy only if the political conditions of the early nineteenth

century, before the Vietnamese had arrived, were re-established.

Bodin transmitted the letter to Bangkok and added a

recommendation for Duang's release from Custody and his return

to political power,in January 1841,Duang reached Battambang,

accompanied by Thai and Cambodian advisers and carrying gifts

for his supporters, including insignia of rank and royal

accoutrement's provide for him and Rama II according to one

source, Bodin had urged Duang's release because"If there are no

superior people to took after a population, the common people

have no security" the records alsosuggest that Bodin's motives

included winning over the Oknha (he was eager that local Khmer,

rather than his own inexperienced troops, should engage the

Vietnamese)by promising them that Duang would ruler over

Cambodia, for the rest of the 1840s, Duang was to be closely

watched and manipulated by Bodin. Duang's return to Cambodia and

Rama III's solicitude for him opened an era in Thai-Cambodian

relations that lasted until French intervention in 1863. While

Duang was conferring with potential courtiers and Bodin was

complaining that the newcomers were consuming Thai supplies,

Thieu Tri was attempting to understand and control Vietnamese

policy toward Cambodia, with a view to thwarting a Thai

invasion, pacifying rebellious provinces of Southern Vietnam,


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and retaining Vietnamese prestige, in late 1841s, Truong Minh

Giang attempted once again to bring Prince Im to power, but

edicts in his name attracted no support, it was at this point,

perhaps that Truong Minh Giang (Trương Minh Giảng) realized

that he had almost no chance of restoring a favorable political

balance in Cambodia, he withdraw to Vietnamese, talking Im, the

Princesses, and the population of the City, numbering some six

thousand people, with him,when he arrived in Vietnam, he sent a

letter to Hue' in which he took the blame for"losing" Cambodia,

to which he referred as emperor's rightful property" he then

took poison and died. The Vietnamese failure did not mean that

the Thai had succeeded and by 1843 Cambodia had become a

quagmire for Chaophraya Bodin, as he wrote Bangkok" we have been

in Cambodia for three years without accomplishing anything ,we

are short of supplies, people are going off into the forest to

live on leaves and roots and nearly a thousand men in our army

have died from lack of food",in 1844, he had to abandon

Phnompenh, where the Vietnamese soon reinstalled Princess Mei as

Cambodia's "Legitimate Queen" while Thai force congregated near

Udong, the Vietnamese maneuver infuriated Bodin, who saw that

many Oknha might now be unwilling to support the Thai, he

complained to Bangkok that " all the Khmer Leader and nobles,

all the district chiefs and all the common people are ignorant,

stupid foolish and gullible, they have no idea what is true and

what is false".

In spite of these difficulties , Vietnamese attempts to

dislodge the Thai forces around Udong throughout 1845 were

fruitless by the end of the year, the Thai and Vietnamese opened

negotiations for a cease-fire, the talks moved forward, for they

were grounded in Thieu-Tri' willingness to abandon his military

positions in Cambodia and by implication, his father's policies

there, they moved slowly,however ,in a context of military

stalemate, even though in political terms conditions were

favorable to the Thai, in Prince Duang they had a seasoned,

popular ruler loyal to Bangkok and able to work through a well

established network of loyal officials in the Srok, but the


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Vietnamese still occupied a strong bargaining position,

particularly as they retained Cambodia's regalia, without which

Duang could not legitimately ascend the throne.

In a face-saving gesture they demanded that a tributary

mission headed by a Cambodian official travel to Hue' in March

1846 and declare Cambodia 's pro form subservience to

Vietnamese, when the embassy returned to Phnompenh in June 1847,

the Vietnamese handed over the Cambodian regalia and released

several members of royal family who had been in their custody,

in some cases for many years, soon afterward, they withdrew

their force from Cambodia, for the first time since 1811, there

were no Vietnamese official on Cambodia soil. Over the next few

months, in a series of ceremonial gestures, Duang reenacted the

restoration of Thai sponsored Kingship that had been eclipsed

for so many years, it would be mistake to dismiss these

ceremonial actions as mere protocol,because Duang ,like most

Southeast Asian rulers at the time, did not disentangle what we

would call the religious and political strands of his thinking,

duties , and behavior and political actions were thought to

enhance or diminish a monarch's fund of merit. On an auspicious

day in April 1848. Duang was anointed by Thai and Cambodian

Brahmans in Udong and ascended the Cambodian Throne, he was

Fifty-two years old, and his Reign, which lasted twelve years

,can be seen as a Cambodian renaissance, for most of these

years, the Kingdom was at peace, and although Thai political

advisers and some Thai troops lingered at Udong, Duang was

relatively free to make political decisions, such as those

connected with awarding title to Oknha, The Chronicles of his

Reign place much emphasis on its restoratives aspects, a wide

range of institutions and relationships was involved, the

Chronicle points to linguistic reforms, public works, sumptuous

laws, and new sets of royal titles, from other sources, we know

that Duang was an accomplished poet and presided over the

promulgation of a new law code and the Compilation of new

Chronicle histories.


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Duang seems to have sought French help not so much to escape

Thai protection, which would have been impossible to manage, as

to defend himself against the Vietnamese, in letters to the

French, he referred to them, as Pol-Pot was to do in the 1970s

as Cambodia's "traditional enemies" Ironically , in the 1860s,

France took over Vietnamese patronage of Cambodia, eliminated

Vietnamese influence, and then proceeded to encourage Vietnamese

immigration into Cambodia, after his tempt to make friends with

French had failed, Duang explained himself to a French

missionary, saying" what would you have me do? I have two

masters who always have an eye fixed on me, they are my

neighbors, and France is far a way." Clearly, many conditions

had to change before Cambodian could emerge from this dual

dependency, which had lasted with brief interludes for more than

fifty years.


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Reference

An, S. (2012, 12 29). Cambodia And Society. Retrieved 4 14, 2014, from

http://som-ang.blogspot.com/2012_12_23_archive.html

Chandler, D. (n.d.). A History of CAMBODIA.

the crisis of the nineteenth century in cambodia

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cambodian chronicles

thai claims

thai kingdom

thai suzerainty

cambodian history

rama iv

restoration of eng